fabulous english country house libraries

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which one would you like?

(no. you can't have them all.) 

I know one thing: my english desk (i think it's a partner's pedestal) would fit right in and feel right at home in any one of these room--even standing in the middle of one. Especially standing in the middle of one. 

More fab libraries here.

 

The Big Bad Handbag

It's one of my most favorites of all... it's probably the best of all my books to read aloud... it's definitely the favorite with children and even though it's out of print... I know it'll come back one day. That is, if children have anything to do with it.

It's called Handbag Friends and it's a book disguised as a pink handbag which has not only a song and some little friends inside but also a nasty purply pimply monster called Clasp. This is a little clip/trailer from the book.

I regularly go into public schools to read to children (I'm part of the Learning Leaders author program--a wonderful program called Author's Read Aloud)--and my school is in Redhook Brooklyn. I go and read to the littlest ones. So they're around 4. A room full of four year olds!

And they are amazing. I'm spoiled now. They are the best ever children to read to! First of all they sit through this long book (64 pages, 3 episodes) and join in the song and they help the Handbag Friends fight the monster and they join in all the fun along the way. And then, almost without fail, every single time I get the same response at the end.

A spontaneous group hug.

I'm not sure it gets much better than that for a writer, do you?

Except maybe if it's this. One time we had Q & A after the Handbag Friends story. And a little girl's hand shot up. "Yes," I said, "What question did you have?"

"I love you" she said.

Happy Manhattan-Henge Day

photo: Chang W Lee
via NYT

two days a year, the sun sets along the east-west axis of Manhattan's street grid. this year it's may 30 and July 12 (so says Hayden Planetarium and she should know).

so happy Manhattan Henge Day!

happy (at last) spring

what can you say? it came.

it was worth the wait.

photo: Angel Franco
Azalea Bank of the NY Botanical Gardens
via NYT

kafka covers

via Frank Chimero
via Jago

how cool are these covers by Peter Mendelsund?

read more about the process of designing the jackets here

intrepid photographer and penguins

See the full gallery on Posterous

via Lens Blog
NYT

gorgeous black and mostly white photos from intrepid NYT photographer of Antarctica, Bernard Kalb, that he took in the 50s. my favorite is the penguin assessing its captors.

more here

 

most beauteous vegetables

Ryan Matthew Smith/The Cooking Lab
via NYT

Have you ever seen vegetables so beauteous? Or as my little niece (who couldn't say the dreaded word) called them, "VENGEtables."

(which, if you a small and facing a broccoli floret coming towards you on a fork, is surely a more accurate word.)

(Also, what's with this floret business? Why does Broccoli get the fancy word that makes it sound like it's from a renaissance court, whereas all peas get is "pod"?)

the v lonely too-high-pitched whale

oh dear.

his love song is chasing all the whale ladies away.

it's too high pitched.

they've been tracking him for almost 20 years

and say he is singing at 52 Hertz 

(which you obviously know as well as I do is the same frequency as the lowest note on a tuba)

(and you'll also know only too well

that this is MUCH higher than usual whales 

who sing at 15-25 range)

if you don't believe me you can listen to his singing here

it's too terribly sad

but if you want to keep going, find out more here

Is Central Park on the Upper West Side?

via NYT

Since 1838, Fifth Avenue has been the central dividing line between the East and West Side of Manhattan.

Except look at this bus stop sign that says it's West and the street sign that says it's East. Apparently it depends on which side of Fifth Avenue you are on. And this sign is on the west side of Fifth Avenue so actually it's still West.

Is the West Side of 5th Avenue the West Side of Manhattan?

(I am sure it is) And in which case, technically, Central Park is on the Upper West Side.

I knew there were lots of reasons to live on the UWS versus the UES. ANd now we get to claim CP!

(BTW: yesterday was the 200th birthday of the Manhattan Street Grid! Created by John Randel. Happy Street Grid Randel Day)

See the full gallery on Posterous

wellington boot inspection

(photo: Wellington Boot Inspection, 1939)

Everyone's been wearing them in New York. Even out to dinner. They come in patterns and bright colors and with cozy fleece liners.

But it used to be you'd only see Hunter wellies on Brits accessorized with Barbour and muddy field and the occasional pheasant. (Sorry. I still can't get my head round the Wellies out to dinner thing.) 

As someone put it: "I have a friend who says that when you see those things on someone, you know they know what they're doing." Best most famous of those being the Queen herself.

But that's not true anymore since we all of us are wearing them now. Unless we all of us actually know what we're doing, do we?

What I want to know is: why are they being inspected? what is she looking for? and when is the next inspection and where should I bring mine?

Oh and how can I get one of those with the number on?

bedtime story

mom (Monica) reading to Presley (looking at her mom) and Finley (in mom's lap)

via @jpokluda

(Thanks Jonathan!)

60 year old mother

Albatross

via NYT

she's the oldest wild bird in the US

and she's a new mother

she's very good for her age isn't she?

plus she has a good name: Wisdom

plus here are some Albatross facts for a wednesday:

• they lay one egg a year
• they have about 35 babies in their lifetime
• they often take a year off from parenting (see above)

abstract dunes

Evelyn Hockstein for The New York Times
via NYT

Sand dunes along the coast near Swakopmund, Namibia

Utopian building

The entire text of Sir Thomas More's UTOPIA written by an artist on an old building in Norwich.

via NYT
photograph: Jonathan Player

owl snob

as a farewell to snow (I love you but it's time, no?)

a sweet parting...
a glorious snowy stormy scene...

painting: "Snow Storm--Steam Boat Off a Harbor's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water" (1842) Turner

books and books and lots of lovely books

See the full gallery on posterous

via
bookshelfporn.com
via Jago

site of just books and books and even more books

beautiful

 

snub nose golden monkey

Europeans first saw this far-fetched monkey in paintings and porcelains. But he looked so fanciful with his red hair-do and blueish stage make-up face, and no one had ever seen a real live actual one, so everyone assumed he was just a figment of Chineses imagination. 

Until, that is, he was "discovered" (well, he knew he was there all along, of course, but anyway) by 19th century French missionary and naturalist in China, Pere Armand David. He's also interesting. He went about in disguise. (See before and after pictures, below.) 

I'm not being rude but is it just me--or can you still tell it's him?

via interesting article 

(on what it means to discover a species--some say it's imperialist but couldn't it also be heroic...)

via NYT

 

 

Wither into the truth: creating in old age

photo of an old writer: Leo Tolstoy
via NYT

Some artists keep on working late in life--and get better with age.

Others peak early and then fizzle out. 

Brooke Allen in the NYT writes, "Creative artists who continue to work late in life so often seem to undergo a sea change: a distillation, a new intensity, a sloughing off of excess and ornament in favor of deep essentials."

Who wouldn't want to be like fine wine and cheese and age well? Plus I'm very keen on this "sloughing off."

"Though leaves are many, the root is one;

Through all the lying days of my youth

I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;

Now I may wither into the truth."

W B Yeats

diaries and journals and notebooks...

There's this cool exhibition on: The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives. (At the Morgan Library til May 22). The journals and notebooks and diaries of famous and not so famous people.

Diaries and Journals. Do you keep them? I used to when I was writing frightful moaning poems in my teens and twenties but no more. (Thank Heaven.)

Some write to escape their lives (Charlotte Bronte in her tiny writing), some to record their lives, some to hide their lives and keep secrets (Sophia Peabody Hawthorne blacked bits out), some to jot down equations and calculations in theirs (I know I do... no no I don't... that would be Einstein's 1922 travel diary) and there are some like Steinbeck who say:

"I have tried to keep diaries before, but they didn't work out because of the necessity to be honest."

That's the paradox. It's like twittering and blogs. Is it all too self-conscious to be honest? too edited? not nearly as spontaneous as they pretend?

But it's the physical book people write in as much as what's inside that I find fascinating. Must tap into the writer's (or at least this writer's and several of the writer friends I know) search for the perfect notebook. Like take a look at Queen Victoria's fancy gold embossed Journal of her Highland expeditions. Or Thoreau's journals along with his special family pencils.

I definitely want to go to the exhibition. Apparently there's even an Renaissance iPad (a diary with secret ink technique for an erasable function!).

via NYT